Description
The MEDIATION Project is an EU funded collaboration of several European institutions aimed at contributing to the implementation of the EU White Paper on Climate Change Adaptation.   Due to the relatively recent concern over European vulnerability to climate change impacts, decision makers at every level of European policy-making require scientific and technical information about climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation concerns, in order to reduce vulnerability in the most cost-effective manner.  This is hampered by an as-of-yet incomplete and fragmented availability of the necessary information.

• An analysis of the decision-making context;
• An inventory, review and further development of methods and metrics for impacts and vulnerability analysis;
• An inventory, review and further development of methods and metrics  for costing of impacts and adaptation options;
• The development of an overarching integrated methodology;
• The development of a flexible, interactive common platform for knowledge sharing;
• Dissemination of this knowledge through a dedicated outreach and training program.

The components of the project will be connected in an iterative fashion, making use of a number of diverse case studies in different regions in Europe which combine selected regional, sectoral and cross-sectoral characteristics and policy questions.
 
IIASA leads the work on assembling models, tools and methods for assessing impacts and vulnerability and adaptation. The main objective of this line of work is to develop and apply a toolbox, defined as a set of models, methods and metrics for the assessment of impacts and vulnerability and adaptation options, which will be applied to key adaptation problems identified in specific case studies. This research will provide quantitative impact and vulnerability assessment tools and models for the case studies in close collaboration with the contextualization, user interfacing, design and evaluation of adaptation options.  Also, this work contributes to the iterative development of an integrated methodology in terms of critically reflecting on the suitability and limitations of the toolbox to given adaptation problems.

Beyond contributing to the case studies, the toolbox will be set up as a robust, stand-alone entity available for use by experts and stakeholders, for future use in an adaptation decision-making context.  The toolbox will also be an important component of Mediation’s common interactive internet-based platform for knowledge sharing.

Funding agency:
European Commission

Project time frame:
January 2010 to July 2013

Partners:
European Climate Forum (ECF)
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Regional Environment Center for Central & Eastern Europe (REC)
Stockholm Environment Institute, Oxford Office (SEI Oxford)
Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
University of Florence, Italy
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Wageningen University, The Netherlands

IIASA Researchers:
Reinhard Mechler
Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer
Stefan Hochrainer
Keith Williges
Anthony Patt
Stefan Pfenninger
Susanne Hanger
Georg Pflug
Magali Dreyfus

For more information, please contact: Reinhard Mechler

Responsible for this page: Jun Watabe
Last updated: 12 Jan 2011